Dr Rainey is a lecturer at Cardiff Law School and is the Director of the Cardiff Law School Centre for Human Rights and Public Law. Her research interests include human rights and equality law, refugee law and public law.

Bernadette graduated in law from Queen’s University, Belfast in 1993 and was awarded a PhD in refugee law in 2003. Whilst completing her PhD, she was employed as a researcher on several human rights projects based in the School of Law at Queen’s. Subsequently, Bernadette took up the post of Research Fellow at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth to work on an AHRB funded project examining the impact of the Human Rights Act on the National Assembly for Wales.

Dr Rainey was a lecturer at Queen’s University before taking up the post of lecturer in Cardiff Law School in 2006. She has published on several areas of human rights law including equality duties and sexual offenders. Her research is primarily focused on “excluded” groups such as refugees and offenders. She is module leader for human rights on the LLB programme and is a criminal law tutor. She is the author of a Human Rights Concentrate (2012) for Oxford University Press and co-editor on a leading textbook in human rights (Jacobs, White & Ovey, The European Convention on Human Rights). Bernadette is also Chair of the Law School’s Equality and Diversity Committee and the Law School Mooting Co-ordinator.

Dr Rainey is chair of the board of trustees, Governance sub-committee, and provides line management support to the Legal Director.